The Surveillance Elephant in the Room… Yesterday’s decision in the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) in what has been dubbed the ‘Europe vs Facebook’ case was, as the Open Rights Group puts it, a ‘landmark victory for privacy rights’.
Much has already been written about it. I do not propose to cover the same territory in any depth – the Open Rights Group blog post linked to above gives much of the background – but instead to examine the response of the European Commission, and the elephant in the Commission’s room: surveillance. The judgment was published yesterday morning, and its essence was very simple. As the CJEU put it (paragraph 94 of the ruling): “…legislation permitting the public authorities to have access on a generalised basis to the content of electronic communications must be regarded as compromising the essence of the fundamental right to respect for private life…”